


no place like home

by andawaywego



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hint: It doesn't, Mentions of Jimberly becoming a thing, Trimberly Week, mature language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11822721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "Because the other her doesn’t deserve this girl who so easily forgives, loves, gives her space because she doesn’t remember her, doesn’t remember them or what it means. The other her doesn’t understand. She’s taking it for granted.Because if this her had Trini she would--She’d be so in love she could die."[basically: the ship is more complicated than they ever anticipated and Kimberly can't remember anything]





	no place like home

**Author's Note:**

> hello. this is my super late angst-day fic for trimberly week. 
> 
> it starts immediately following the graphic novel Aftershock, but i do attempt to explain it in terms of what happens in the actual plot. it might be best to know that graphic novel though, but this is definitely readable without having read it.
> 
> basically, i was watching MMPR two months ago (the Island of Illusion episodes) and thought, "damn, that should happen to the new kids," and then it took me two months to will myself to write it.
> 
> hopefully you like it. it's a little bleak, but i promise, there's a happy ending. also. best of luck. it's long.

...

What it comes down to is that they never learned _how_ : how to compromise whatever versions of themselves they were before that train crash; how to fall asleep at night with screams that have long since been silenced rattling around inside of their heads; how to ignore the crawling-skin-memory of Rita Repulsa’s staff to their necks, the heat of a fire ready to devour them whole at their heels.

More than that, they never learned how to move on from the worst night any of them had ever experienced. Like some low point in a feature length film.

Presenting: five lost kids and the things they tried to forget in vibrant technicolor

There are a lot of reasons how. There are fewer reasons _why._

The ship is as unpredictable and unknowable as the inner workings of their own minds, and nearly as inconvenient, too.

And anyway, maybe it’s just time they learned. Maybe it’s the perfect moment for it.

All five of them frightened by the memory of soldiers surrounding them, a woman threatening them. Jacob and Aubrey’s frozen bodies behind that _woman_ and the way it felt to have a gun pointed at their heads.

That’s the why. One of them, at least.

(not the one that matters, but that will come later)

Because their first defense mechanism is to take it out on each other.

“Maybe if you hadn’t--” says Zack.

“So it’s my fault? How was I supposed to--” says Jason.

“Guys, _guys_ \--” says Billy.

“You’re _both_ being idiots!” says Trini.

Kimberly is silent. Kimberly is waiting, shivering even though Trini threw her jacket at her moments before and it’s now tight around her wrists. She’s holding that putty’s hand in a glass jar that some group called Apex threw at them on their way out of town and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do with it because one touch from it had been enough to turn two otherwise normal kids into freakish, putty monsters that destroyed half the town.

She doesn’t realize she’s edging back towards her own platform surrounding the morphing grid.

She doesn’t even hear Alpha-5 trying to cut his way into the argument, or Zordon’s booming disappointment as it echoes around the room.

Trini jumps between Zack and Jason to keep them from coming to blows and Billy joins her and Kimberly is frozen, helpless and unsure. She’s not so far away that she’s safe from Jason and Zack’s heavy pushes against one another when it eventually comes stumbling her way.

What happens is over in seconds, moments:

Trini is pushed. It’s an accident, but it sends her into Kimberly, who drops the hand, the glass, its container in an effort to catch the other girl.

“Are you okay?” she asks, but the glass is shattered at their feet and Trini nods anyway.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she says with a glare at the boys.

Kimberly has only held Trini in her arms like this twice and she burns the same way she did the first way--in that tumultuous, confusing way that always sends her back to Jason on basic instinct. That makes her say things like, _Use your words, Jason,_ when he’s edging around asking her out even though her mind is screaming, _Stop, no, don’t_ , because Trini _cares_ about them.

She said so herself.

And Kimberly had sort of known that already

(from Trini climbing through her window at night and Trini bringing her coffee in the morning to early training and Trini offering to study for AP Bio tests together and the way her eyes always dart so carefully to Kimberly’s lips when they’re too close, but she never, never closes the distance)

(because she’s careful)

(they both are)

but the confirmation had left her shaking there on the side of that mountain as Trini got further and further away in the distance.

But Apex. Aubrey and Jacob and now Kimberly’s had a gun pointed at her. Multiple guns.

And it’s a different kind of helpless.

Kimberly is frightened and Trini is, too, but neither of them knows of _what_ exactly. Not that it matters.

Some things are easily read by someone who doesn’t even really understand. And the ship is theirs. The ship listens to them, it learns from them, and there’s a part of it they’ve only experienced once. One that they didn’t know they could control or activate or--

Kimberly picks up the hand and Trini is braced against her shoulder. Zack is behind them, grabbing as an apology, enclosing Trini’s wrist in his fingers and saying, “I didn’t mean to,” and Jason is doing pretty much the same thing to him with Billy’s hand still lingering on his chest, as though worried more punches are going to be thrown.

Point is: they’re all touching when Kimberly activates it, when she sends her mind reeling into some unknown place.

The others are touching her, their fear boiling heavy in their heads and empty in their chests and they’re sent into that same void moments later.

..

 

By the time Kimberly wakes up, Jason is long gone, vanished into the cold dark reaches of the woods surrounding her. Possibly investigating that explosion in that same careful voice that he’d used when he’d called out for her as she crawled out of the water and back to her clothes just…

Well, she’s not sure how long before, exactly.

She pushes herself up and then to her feet, brushes dirty hands down the fabric of her jeans until the dirt is falling from her palms and back onto the ground. It’s cold. It hadn’t been this cold before.

“Jason?” she calls out, her voice hoarse and chilled.

There’s no answer and the sound falls dead against the dense thickness of the woods around her.

Angel Grove is dark below, the lights gone now, leaving it an eerie crevice of shadows in the distance.

That _sound_.

The explosion.

It must have knocked out the power lines, whatever it was.

“Hello?”

She tries it again, but somehow it seems even quieter than her last unanswered question.

Jason isn’t nearby. Tall, quiet Jason. His voice is ringing in her ears, his, _So let’s go,_ loud and thundering behind her ears as it bats its way through her head.

Anyway: alone she may be, and stiff from lying on the ground, and confused so deeply that it’s a physical pain in her chest--but Kimberly pushes one foot of the ground and then another.

One step after the other.

She moves forward, carefully, in the direction the explosion came from.

.

The old mine isn’t far, and her feet lead her to a sheet of rock down towards the center of the quarry. A wall that vibrates as she gets closer. Kimberly jumps and moves her hand away.

Jason isn’t here, either, and no van is anywhere to be seen. He must have left.

But Jason Scott doesn’t seem the type to leave an incapacitated girl in the middle of the woods.

Alone.

Not one he’d just been worried had drowned or something, one he’d been so ready to jump into the water after. Kimberly frowns.

She stands there, in the middle of nowhere, and shivers. Her phone, she remembers, too late, is still sitting on her bathroom counter, where she’d left it before leaving her house--slipping out the window with an extra set of clothes in her backpack, intent on distracting herself long enough that the insistent buzz of Amanda and Harper’s incoming messages would slip from her mind.

Talk about distraction.

But then--

Something buzzes in her back pocket. She frowns, reaching around to find the same phone she’d meant to leave at home--thought she did, maybe--lighting up with a new message and her backpack is nowhere to be seen or felt.

_Meet me at the football stadium. ASAP._

From someone named _Sunshine_.

It’s because she’s looking down that she sees herself in an entirely different outfit than the one she’d been in before. Her white tank top has been replaced with some soft grey shirt and a yellow jacket she’s certain isn’t hers.

Kimberly’s hands are shaking. She nearly drops her phone. Instead, she settles for slipping it into her pocket and running her fingers through her short hair. Her breath comes out in white puffs of cold air that spiral into the darkness surrounding her.

It is absolutely, terrifyingly quiet around her. There’s no one else to be heard or seen. No crickets in the distance, even.

She doesn’t know what’s happening.

But she turns towards home anyway.

.

The last thing she remembers:

Jason’s eyes lit up in the glow of the city below them. Jason’s easy smile.

But another girl’s hand and another girl’s eyes and someone saying, _I’m fine,_ and--

.

The quarry is two miles long. Kimberly’s never walked the full length of it, content, instead, to remain on its furthest edges in the trees, by her lake, at the edge of town that she thinks would be a more popular make-out spot for teenagers if the brush weren’t so thick and impossible to through in a car.

Her house isn’t very far. Just a twenty minute walk from her swimming spot. Thirty from here, maybe, considering the late hour.

Considering the shaky way her legs are trembling underneath each step she takes.

Her boots scuff on the ground.

It’s a cold night for September. She shivers in a stranger’s jacket.

Around the winding, forest road, she should be able to see her backyard--that eight-foot tall privacy fence, brown and brand new and the old swingset rusting by the garage.

Instead--

The trees clear and Kimberly finds herself stepping onto the dark, painted grass of the football stadium.

She turns her head, panic balking behind her eyes and up her throat. Her phone lights back up the moment she tugs it free of her pocket. The message is still up.

_Meet me at the football stadium. ASAP._

There’s no one in her phone named _Sunshine_ and when she clicks it open, no other messages. The rest of her inbox is cleared, emptied out. Just one message.

And now here she is.

It’s eerie with the lights off--the same lights she’d just been watching distantly, though she’d only known the general idea of where they were. Not enough to seek them out in all of the faraway, twinkling city.

Now it’s dark, suffocating. The bleachers spread upward and out, jutting like some sort of crudely made structure. The snack booth is shuttered, with it’s metal gates barring the windows, and the paint is dry and cracked on the grass.

A far cry from the vibrant, dazzling stadium she’d bounced around for years in an uncomfortable uniform, one size too tight.

Her phone screen darkens in her hand. The time says _10:03_ but it had said that, too, the moment she’d first pulled it out. Somehow, she’d unwittingly crossed town on foot. More time than zero minutes must have passed.

She’s nervous. Afraid.

And fear is what you make of it.

It feels as if a hundred invisible eyes are watching her from the stands on either side and she doesn’t dare to take one step closer to the home side, the side that attaches to the actual school building, too afraid of someone she doesn’t recall knowing.

Someone who texted her to come here and now here she is.

“Kim?”

The voice makes her jump and her head whips around painfully, trying to pin down the source of such a light, cheerful voice, laced with utter bewilderment.

And then she sees her. A girl.

Standing across from her with her hands buried in her bright yellow jacket pockets. Kimberly can’t shake the feeling that she’s seen her before even as her heart judders against her ribs--even as she hates the nervous way she’s shaking. As she thinks that she _must_ be dreaming because no way could life be so confusing.

This girl knows her name.

“Who are you?” Kimberly asks, and the girl’s face falls, eyes drooping in perplexity that Kimberly doesn’t understand how to decipher.

“What do you mean, who am I?” the girl says and then she takes a step forward, her hands coming out of her pockets as if she wants to reach out and touch Kimberly.

As if they have some sort of familiarity that Kimberly isn’t privy to.

“I’m dreaming,” Kimberly says, more for herself than for anyone else--for this strange girl standing across from her.

The girl sighs. She shakes her head and runs a hand through her hair. “You and me both,” she says, “you and me both.”

.

A fact: Kimberly does not remember the things that this girl does. She does not recall the cause of the explosion or the coins or the ship--her sacred, intergalactic duty. She does not remember fighting Rita or almost dying or coming back, nor does she know the reason she’s here.

Neither does this other girl. Neither do the three boys spread across town.

A fact: Kimberly is missing _two months_ of her memory.

Something she’ll figure out soon: this place is not home. This place is no place at all.

.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” says Kimberly and that’s how it starts. Her stomach is rolling uncomfortably and she feels vague, almost detached from the things around her. “I...I…”

She wants to say that she’s going to wake up any minute, but she doesn’t quite manage.

“I mean,” the girl says, “neither do I. We were in the ship just a minute ago and now we’re…”

“The ship?”

The girl freezes. “Are you serious?” she asks. She pauses and there go those hands again, back into their pockets. “Do you really not know who I am?”

Kimberly shakes her head.

(She looks familiar, of course, and there’s a tugging in Kimberly’s chest--an aching in her veins crying out that this girl is no stranger--but it’s enough of a shock that it seems false, seems predatory. She wants to close her eyes and wake up in her bed.)

“Kim, it’s me. It’s Trini,” Trini says.

It even _sounds_ familiar and Kimberly can feel the name forming on the tip of her tongue.

“Trini,” she says and Trini’s eyes light up in something akin to hope. But then, “What’s going on?”

.

The name in her phone still says, _Sunshine,_ but Trini says,  “That’s me,” when Kimberly shows her the message in askance.

Says, “You thought it was funny,” like Kimberly should remember that.

Because she _should_ remember saying that. She should remember putting this girl’s number in her phone and she should remember _this girl_ , but she doesn’t. She doesn’t remember her at all, even if every cell in her body is screaming otherwise.

“So, you sent this to me then,” she says as she puts her phone into her back pocket and sways unsteadily on her feet.

Trini throws a hand out as if to catch her, but stops herself short, just sort of leaving her hand hovering in the air between them. “Yeah,” she says after a moment, but then, “Like a month and a half ago...or, like, two months...back before…”

She cuts herself off suddenly, brilliantly, her eyes a dazzling shade of uncertainty that throws a wrench in Kimberly’s chest.

Her eyebrows furrow and her heart thuds. “Two... _months_ ago?”

Because two months ago she was still working her stupid summer job at the mall. She was still going to cheer practice three days a week. She hadn’t sent that picture yet and she had _just_ broken up with Ty and all of his teeth were still in his mouth.

She would remember something like this.

Some message from a girl she must have known asking to meet her at the football field. The date on the message hadn’t said August--hadn’t said anything. But Trini is giving her this pretty frown that seems fairly deliberate.

“Did you hit your head?” Trini asks. Her hand twitches and Kim briefly imagines what it would feel like for her fingers to card through her hair.

Which is ridiculous, of course, and more than a little crazy, so she tries to shake the thought from her mind.

Either way, Trini doesn’t do that. Instead, her hand drops back down and she’s quick to stuff it into her jeans pocket, curling her fingers uncomfortably to make them fit in the tight fabric.

“No,” Kimberly says. “I mean, there was an explosion and I...I woke up on the ground, but I don’t think I…”

“An explosion?” Trini cuts in, eyes wild. “What do you mean? Where were you?”

“Yeah, over at the gold mine outside town?” She waits a moment for any sign that Trini knows what she’s talking about, but there is none, her face expressionless. “I was with Jason Scott and then there was this noise and I...I don’t know. I was alone when I woke up.”

Trini blinks. She stares.

“What?” Kimberly asks. “ _What_?”

An explosion. A text message that she supposedly should have gotten two months ago. And Jason Scott still missing.

She’s half-expecting Trini to call her crazy or to tell her that she’s dead--that the explosion killed her and all of this is just a dream.

“Fuck,” Trini says instead. “Kim...you’re…”

She’s quiet for a moment, just sort of staring at Kimberly in a way that makes her feel vaguely unsettled.

Then, “You’re... _Fuck_ . It’s _November_ , Kim...It’s...Why don’t you remember?”

.

What feels like hours later, Kimberly finally stops hyperventilating.

It’s a relief.

Trini, this girl who is claiming that she’s missing nearly _two months_ of her memory--two months in which they’d apparently formally met and become friends--sits beside her on the dewy, stadium grass with one hand barely brushing Kimberly’s shoulder in some sort of show of solidarity.

“You’re okay,” she whispers, but it’s clearly a lie because nothing makes sense.

She woke up in the woods right where she’d last been. How could two months have passed while she’d been out?

“I want to go home,” she says evenly once her breathing is under control.

When she swivels her head, Trini is watching her carefully, lightly. She looks torn, but she nods, once.

“Okay,” she says, “okay, we can do that.”

And then she pulls Kimberly to her feet.

Then she frowns. “I think we can, anyway.”

.

Trini leads her home. She seemingly already knows the way and there’s something painful hooking underneath Kimberly’s ribs because that has to mean _something_ but she doesn’t really want to consider _what_ right now.

_Two months--_

They walk through the front gates of the field and out past the ticketing booth and there is no better place for Kimberly Hart to feel so substantially lost than on the torn up pavement of the parking lot. She toes the ground hard, audibly, with every single step as if to prove that, yes--she’s here.

Trini matches her pace, but keeps her distance. It’s not something Kimberly is used to when it comes to walking beside someone who claims to be her friend.

Normally, they’d be brushing shoulders already.

They don’t speak. They walk.

The sidewalk spreads out and twists up like it’s being seen through some sort of fisheye lense in a bad movie. Some shaky-cam version of Angel Grove that Kimberly does not recognize.

It isn’t until they’re maybe ten minutes away, passing by that scuffed up _Welcome to Angel Grove_ sign by the old movie theater that Kimberly stumbles a little and Trini reaches out to grab her wrist, to steady her.

The touch burns through the sleeve of Kimberly’s jacket. It’s the sort of thing she’d swear she felt before if she weren’t currently trying not to lose her mind.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” says Kimberly, who is reeling and confused and is certain that she is dead from the pins and needles in her palms, from the heat in her wrist where this other girl’s delicate fingers are resting, lightly. “I…”

Trini’s eyes look past her, but her grip doesn’t falter. It stays locked onto Kimberly’s wrist and she’s glad for it, glad for the tether, something to make her feel more grounded.

But Trini is frowning. Trini is turning her head and looking up and down the street at the houses. Kimberly can’t look away from the set of Trini’s eyes, the curve of her nose as her head turns, and the grey beanie she has pulled down over her ears.

At least, not until Trini says, “What the fuck just happened?”

And, when Kimberly finally brings herself to look away, they’re not on the street anymore and they’re certainly nowhere near her house.

They’re on some sort of rocky hill, the sky dark and vast above them. So much so that Kimberly nearly doubles over in the shock of it all. Thinks of the football field and how she’d almost been _home_ both times and now…

It looks like the outskirts of the gold mine again, similar to where she’d wandered to what now feels like hours ago when she’d woken up alone. Except now, it’s not entirely dark. There’s light here and it’s coming from a crackling fire a good twenty feet away, surrounded by beat-up chairs.

There’s light and Kimberly’s pupils dilate painfully to adjust for it, to accommodate it, and then she sees the other person sitting in one of the chairs.

Jason Scott smiles at them like it’s some kind of reflex and then he’s on his feet and hurrying over to where they’re standing.

Kimberly expects some sort of apology for his having left her lying in the dirt or a better explanation than _you’re missing two months of your memory_. She thinks she starts to see a flash of it in the blue of his eyes as he draws closer, in the hard line of his lips, but then he says, “You guys are here, too. What the hell is going on? Where are Zack and Billy?”

And Kimberly is certain now that if she weren’t dead already, she certainly would like to be.

At least then things would make sense.

.

It’s to be expected, really, that Kimberly had been about to have her worries abated and had maybe begun to come to terms with her own _death_ when the boy who was meant to say, _Oh, hey, sorry about all that. There’s really a great explanation and it all comes down to why I left you in the woods_ , ends up sitting around a bonfire with this girl she met in the football stadium.

This girl who is claiming she’s missing her memory.

“Kim...she doesn’t remember anything,” is how Trini had introduced the whole thing and now her and Jason Scott are talking in hushed voices across this weird campfire that’s apparently an integral part of the whole scene.

“...the ship, Trini! How did we even get here?” Jason asks Trini, hysteria raising the volume just so.

Kimberly’s ankles are aching from all the walking she’s done. Unless her and Trini _did_ somehow magically end up here, she’s fairly certain that she just walked across the entire city _twice_ . She’s never been in a situation where she wanted and _didn’t_ want the answers to all her questions in equal parts and she’s busy deciding that she doesn’t like it _at all_ when she hears her name.

“--when Zordon sent us to that...that _place_ to show us what it would be like if Rita won? It felt the same there as it does here and I just...Kimberly doesn’t _remember_ anything, Jason. All of it is just...gone… She doesn’t even know we’re--”

Trini’s head whips around to look at Kimberly, sitting across the fire from her, and she eyes her critically, cutting herself short.

Kimberly glowers at her, at both of them. “No,” she says, “don’t stop on my account. Please. Continue to talk about me like I’m not here. _I’m_ going home.”

Really, she doesn’t know if she _is_. This whole thing is making her so sick that she’d really rather just sink into the ground and forfeit another walk home altogether for fear that the world will spin around her again and send her elsewhere.

She pulls herself shakily to her feet and her eyes lock onto Trini’s in a way that feels meaningful, though she’s not sure _why_ and then she starts off, past the bonfire and towards the direction that seems the most like _home_.

.

Something she doesn’t know: she created this place. With a little help from the others. It’s a creation, a foundation, malleable and misguided and entirely formed around her.

It’s a mere shadow of her city and it’s left her a mere shadow of herself.

You’d think from the winding roads and the twisting trees she’d have some idea before this, before she stumbles towards home with Trini and Jason’s questioning voices at her back, but she doesn’t.

Not until the ground gives way under her feet at her privacy fence. Not until the sound of the footsteps barrelling after her fade.

Not until she closes her eyes as the ground trembles--an _earthquake_ is what it feels like--under the scuffed soles of her boots and suddenly she’s not standing just on the edge of her house anymore.

Suddenly, she’s--

.

Standing in a bedroom. An unfamiliar one.

The moon is streaming in through the window behind her, chopping itself up through the venetian blinds to send spatters of light across the hardwood floors.

Kimberly feels something being gripped painfully in her hands and when she looks down, she sees the lip of a desk splintering under her fingers. It had to have been crumbling already, or else she’s been drugged with something that’s made her strong enough to do something like this.

If there were someone to question, something to _ask_ , now would be the time.

But Kimberly can’t even form a thought, let alone yield to the idea that she’s being jerked around like some sort of marionette across town and that all of this is some sort of Wizard of Oz fever dream that she’s bound to wake up from any moment.

Any moment now.

It’s going to happen.

Except it doesn’t.

It’s a nice enough bedroom. A far cry from the well-established, furniture-worn carpet on her own floor back home and there are few pictures on the walls. The only things in frames are drawings that she can’t really make out in the darkness from where she’s being supported by the desk.

“Hello?” she asks, because she doesn’t know this room.

She _feels_ alone, but she has to be sure. Has to know if there’s going to be answer. Because, if not--

There isn’t one and Kimberly takes a careful step away from the desk, hoisting herself upright and moving to stand at the foot of the bed, looking up at the pillows. She’s not certain, but for a moment, it looks as if someone is lying under the covers, sound asleep.

In a blink, it’s gone.

There’s a disturbance then. Just when Kimberly is making up her mind to leave, to go home. To sleep whatever this is _off_ because all of this has to be some sort of sick joke, right?

She’d heard rumors of Farkas Bulkmeister slipping something into Aisha Campbell’s drink at her party over the summer. That has to be what this is. Some sort of roofie-induced acid trip or whatever.

It’s not real.

Except there’s the distinct sound of water dripping from some great height and then the slamming of something into the wall beside the bed. Kimberly _watches_ as plaster and paint shake off the very foundation of it, leaving nothing but bare boards as if something invisible and _heavy_ just broke it in half.

And she saw this weird, creepy movie about the dangers of bad trips once in health class, sophomore year, so she thinks that’s what it is when she hears, _I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,_ in some snivelling, putrid voice that rings in her head.

Another crashing noise. This time from the wardrobe on Kimberly’s right. She turns her head to see doors hanging off their hinges and then, _No! Stop! You’re hurting me!_

More crashing, more crushing walls sucking in on themselves and Kimberly drops to her knees and claps her hands over her ears, clenches her eyes shut, mutters, “It’s not real, it’s not real,” to no one but herself.

For what feels like an hour, she’s stuck with nothing but the sound of her own breathing and then, finally--

She pulls her hands away. She opens her eyes.

The bonfire is in front of her and Jason Scott is at her side, his heavy hand pressed into the flat of her shoulder blade.

It’s Trini’s worn, yellow sneakers on the ground in front of her and she follows the lines of her legs to look at her face. Kimberly can’t stop the shutter of her breath wracking through her body, couldn’t if she wanted to.

“We have to get out of here,” Jason says and Trini nods.

Her fists are clenched at her sides.

“Yeah,” she says. “We really do.”

It’s silent for a very long time and then Kimberly is tugged to her feet and sat down in a chair and Jason sits beside her while Trini paces the length of the fire.

“Kim,” she says after a moment and she stops pacing to face her.

Kimberly’s mind is a racing jumble of the voice she’d heard in the bedroom, the sounds of walls crumbling around her. She doesn’t hesitate to meet Trini’s eyes.

“There’s some things you gotta know, Princess.”

And the feral glimmer in the otherwise darkness of her eyes makes Kimberly’s fingers clench around the knees of her jeans, the nickname smouldering like the fire sitting between them.

.

And then Trini is talking, saying all sorts of things like, _Billy Cranston blew up a mountain,_ and, _these weird coins made us superheros,_ and the cadence of her voice is soft and careful as it composes an explanation together, as she spins some crazy tale into cold puffs of air that sing up against the distant, black sky.

.

Afterwards:

“You okay?” Jason asks.

“You guys are fucking crazy,” Kimberly says.

Her throat feels raw, as if shredded into red ribbons on the inside. Her tongue is heavy and dead as it rests against the backs of her teeth and she forces herself to breath in and out, with names like _Rita_ and _Goldar_ rattling around in her skull.

_An underground ship._

_An android._

_Billy Cranston fucking died._

_She carried his body and doesn’t remember._

_Billy Cranston fucking came back._

_Aubrey and Jacob being turned into monsters that destroyed the city a second time._

_Goldar again._

_Something called Apex._

_A hand in a glass._

_A hand that broke in the glass._

_A hand that she touched._

_That she touched first._

It’s a long time before she can speak again.

.

Trini watches her across the fire, as if waiting for something that Kimberly is certain she can’t offer. She has no place inside her to give answers for questions that haven’t been asked yet.

And they’re talking about weeks, here. That’s the thing.

Trini spoke about _days_ and _days_ that Kimberly has forgotten. And that’s all this nonsense about being alien superheroes and half the town being destroyed aside. Days she apparently is still spending in detention

(or _was_ perhaps, before some giant golden monster crushed the school)

for something neither of them will say aloud, though she’s asked. A dark look had crossed Jason’s face and she’d hated him, viscerally, for a moment for all the things he very clearly _wasn’t_ saying.

Clearly he knew. She must have told him--this boy not unlike herself that must feel as deeply as she does about her own mistakes. He’s the top contender.

But Trini hadn’t looked at her in that same way and Kimberly had to wonder if she ever found out--if whatever future self she was in their world had ever gotten around to telling this friend of hers.

And because Kimberly has never really had any qualms about speaking her mind: “You guys really believe all of this shit?” she asks, glancing over at Trini across the fire. “You really think you saved the entire universe, the fate of which, _apparently,_ resides underneath the Krispy Kreme on Broad? Seriously? That’s hilarious.”

“It’s not _funny_ . Billy _died--_ ”

“Not--” Kim jumps in, swallowing thickly. “I--I just meant...this is crazy, right?”

“Yeah,” says Jason, clearing his throat. “You said that before, actually. When we...when we first found the ship and then Zordon sort of--”

He trails off, waving his right hand around as if he expects that to provide the answer to her.

“Sort of _what_ exactly?”

Trini swallows. Visibly. “Sent us to some sort of nightmare hell-scape.”

Kimberly lets out a hollow, humorless laugh. “Sort of like this one?” she asks.

It sits heavy and dark right there between all three of them--the implication.

And then Jason bursts out laughing.

The other two turn their heads to give him this look as though they’re certain he’s lost it entirely and maybe he has because he jumps to his feet and glances between them.

“We have to get to the ship!” he says and then he’s walking around the fire and past the chairs to disappear into the darkness.

Trini and Kimberly sit there, these two girls who know each other and don’t--but only for a moment--for Jason is already slipping into shadow and whatever is sparking between them is so strong that they have no intention of being left alone with it for long.

They follow after him.

.

He takes them to a wide expanse of rock, harsh and cold with the last hot dregs of sunlight absorbed during the day long since gone. Jason walks with purpose like he’s done this a million times.

Maybe he has.

Except he freezes a few feet up and Trini and her both are right behind him. Kimberly nearly bumps into him from how close she’d been walking and neither of them move for a long time.

“Where is it?” Jason asks finally. “Where is it?”

Trini is steady beside her. She says, “Oh my god.”

But as far as Kimberly can see, there’s nothing there.

Except a boy. She squints.

_Billy Cranston._

“Billy!” Jason yells, his voice this hysterical, crazy thing that Kimberly has never heard before. She jumps. “Billy!”

A pause. Then, “Guys!”

She watches his shoulder stiffen and he stops pacing to look at them. The whole thing is familiar. Like deja vu on repeat and it aches across her chest and back through her shoulder blades.

It’s not until he says, “Where’s the ledge?” that she realizes she’s holding her breath.

.

The answers she gets:

“There’s supposed to be a-a _cliff_ ...right _there_ \--”

“--entrance to our _ship--”_

“--across it and then Billy fell _down_ it and we--”

“--the _fuck_ did it go?”

What she understands:

There should be a cliff or something where there is nothing but solid, rocky ground. It looks solid at least and some unfamiliar boy’s voice says, _Like a video game!_ in her head as she wonders if maybe it’s some sort of falsification--something that _looks_ like solid ground but there’s a hundred foot drop waiting below the seemingly innocent dirt.

“Do you think it’s some sort of _cloaking_ device?” Billy yells from eighty feet away, his hand cupped around his mouth to make the sound carry.

Jason shrugs in some exaggerated move so that he can see it through the dark distance.

“He’s got a point,” says Trini. “I mean...we don’t have our coins, Jason. Do you think this is what it looks like to normal people? To hide it or something?”

Jason shrugs again. Normally this time.

“Should I jump?” Billy asks loudly, but the fear is still evident in his question. “Because, last time I jumped, I--”

Kimberly remembers Jason saying, _Billy fell_ **_down_ ** _it,_ and understands why.

“He’s scared,” Kimberly says and the other two look at her as if she’s crazy.

“Of course he is!” Jason snaps, sounding angrier than Kimberly has ever heard him. “He...The ground could just fall from right under him if he decided to walk and we don’t know _where_ the cliff should start or end so he can’t _jump._ You’d have to be crazy to--”

.

Ladies and gentlemen: Kimberly Hart, complete lunatic.

.

Two shaky steps out she can feel Trini’s fingers grip the back of her jacket and then slip away as she moves further. Jason must tug her back because she hears him hiss, “ _Not you, too_ ,” and then, “ _Kim,_ get back here!”

Across the shadows, she can see Billy watching her with one of his hands raised and flapping back and forth nervously. She’s seen him do this motion before--in shared middle school classes whenever he’d do a class presentation, years ago--and she tries to send him a placating smile, to tell him that she’s okay--even as she’s walking like she’s heading through a minefield or something--but she’s certain he can’t see it.

“Kimberly,” he says loudly enough that she can hear him, “I don’t think this is--I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“I’m just proving to you guys that this is all nuts!” she says to no one but herself. “There’s...it’s just the ground here, guys. It’s...it’s not some cloaking device or a secret tunnel. It’s just the ground.”

She stumbles a bit and has to catch herself. Behind her, she can hear Trini gasp and then the shuffle of feet. She resists the urge to throw a look back at her as if to say, _See? I’m fine_.

Because part of her _is_ a little nervous that the ground is going to fall from beneath her feet and then she’s going to find herself in some bizarro-world spaceship in an underground cave. Doesn’t sound exactly thrilling.

(it also doesn’t necessarily sound worse than what she’s already doing--spending the night in some version of Angel Grove that keeps throwing her around without any explanations, but that doesn’t matter as much)

She makes it. The ground doesn’t fall from under her feet and Billy Cranston stands in front of her with this relieved look on his face.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

And she’s fine. Really, she is.

But she hates the question. Doesn’t really know the best answer.

She nods. “Sure.”

And then Trini and Jason are running across dirt that Kimberly had carefully, _carefully_ crossed moments before and Billy doesn’t hesitate to meet them.

.

Their voices are a mixture of elation and confusion and then worse, perhaps, once Billy knows what’s going on with her.

“Do you think it’s a side effect?” Billy asks, and Kimberly looks away.

And, _yes,_ they apparently _do_ think it’s a side effect.

(of what, exactly, she’s not sure)

“Where is the entrance to the ship?” Trini asks and Billy flaps his hands again and then flattens them against his thighs.

“I don’t know,” he tells them.

Jason ducks down and presses his hand flat to the ground beneath them. “It’s solid,” he says, but Kimberly _told them_ it was. It’s the ground, of course it is.

“So, not a video game then,” Trini mutters, like some sort of inside joke and the boys look at her and this sparks some whole new turn of conversation.

Kimberly’s head is aching. She tugs on the sleeves of her jacket, as they say things she doesn’t understand and a name keeps coming up.

 _Zack_.

Their voices build to a crescendo and finally a plan is made: find Zack.

(but _find_ implies that he is lost and Jason’s eyes are wild at the concept)

“What is this place?” Trini asks and Kimberly doesn’t know _why_ but she needs something solid against her hand and her fingers loosely grip the sleeves of Trini’s sweatshirt, tugging her hand over until they’re touching more fully.

She tells herself she’d have grabbed Jason--the more familiar of the two--if he were closer when Trini gives her this _look_ and doesn’t pull away.

“I think I know,” Billy tells them. “But we should go to the docks.”

There’s something about him that Kimberly just... _believes_.

.

But going somewhere intentionally here, might be crazy.

“I couldn’t even get to my house,” Kimberly reminds them. “Twice.”

She’s an outsider to this group, it feels like. And they’re on their way to find the missing link of their little quartet. It’s not as if she’s exactly in a place she’d call “warm”, but she has a feeling she’s going to pushed even further into the cold the moment they find who they’re looking for.

“We can manipulate this place,” Billy tells her, but that doesn’t make any sense. He shrugs off Jason’s stare and says, “I’ll explain later. Just think of the docks.”

So Kimberly does.

(she also doesn’t let go of Trini’s wrist, but that’s beside the point)

Trini’s arm moves under her hand and there’s this feeling that she’s always subconsciously associated with being sucked into a twister, though she’s never, ever experienced anything like it before. The air swirls sickeningly around her and she’s vibrating. She can feel it.

Like all her breath is being sucked from her lungs.

“What the hell are you guys doing?”

When she opens her eyes, Kimberly sees Zackary Taylor standing on the dewy, slippery docks in some sort of misty rain. His eyes are darker, more hollow, than the last time she saw him

(freshman english, three years ago)

and he looks at her the way the other three do: like he knows her better than she knows herself.

Billy scrubs his face with his hands and Jason reaches out to clap Zack on the shoulder. Says, “I’m sorry. About before. I--”

Trini is breathing more evenly now. “You’re okay,” she says softly and Zack nods at Jason before he comes over to curl an arm around Trini’s shoulders, drawing her in and pulling her hand out of Kimberly’s in the process.

She glares as Trini nods into his shoulder as he talks to her, as she responds in a quiet voice Kimberly can’t hear, and the burning under her skin is displacement.

It’s not jealousy.

She doesn’t know these kids. Even if they claim to know _her_.

Doesn’t know _Trini_ and certainly doesn’t have a right to be jealous of her or her _boyfriend_.

Why would she be jealous?

.

Zack is quickly brought up to speed--no easy feat considering that he has a hundred and one questions of his own, ranging from _Where are we?_ to _Why is Kim looking at me like that_?

She’s quick to look away when he says this and Billy takes over, Billy tells him and Trini brushes closer and closer to Kimberly until she’s positive that it’s the proximity that’s keeping her from taking full, even breaths.

“Alpha-5 told me about this place,” says Billy, shaking a little from the chill, she thinks.

At first, at least. But she remembers too quickly that the others said Billy died here.

He drowned and she’d pulled his body from the ocean herself and she’d felt for a pulse and she hadn’t felt _anything_.

She doesn’t _remember_. But she knows what she’s been told and, for a moment, it’s almost like cold, wet skin under her fingertips and palms. She could swear it’s happening in the actual moment.

Except it’s not.

She’s just standing there and no one is touching her. Trini gives her an odd look and Kimberly clenches and unclenches her fists.

“Alpha...he told me about this place,” Billy says and it’s deathly still. “They...the other Power Rangers, they used to train here.”

A pause.

“Well... _sort_ of train. It was more like a test than actual training.”

“What do you mean?” Zack asks and Jason ruffles his hand through his own hair, brushing closer to her side as if he’s trying to protect her from something.

Kimberly watches them both, wonders at whether she really knows them at all or if all of this is fake. If she’s even really here right now.

Trini’s shoulder brushes into her arm. She _feels_ real.

.

What Billy means:

  * There’s some sort of complex netherworld hidden in the very foundation of the ship’s matrix. Some sort of malleable grid that the user can make look like anyplace they want so that whoever enters can face whatever the user wants them to.



(he pauses to tick a few examples-- _alien insectoids, robots, other evil-doing humanoids)_

  * Those trapped inside can only come out when A) the person who sent them there pulls them out or B) whatever evil they were sent to face is defeated.



Neither sounds particularly promising to Kimberly.

.

“Are you _sure_?” Trini asks, sounding petrified and Kimberly feels a rush of cold on the back of her neck

(remembers standing in the street with some ashen version of her mother crumpling to the ground beside her, remembers the cold burn of metal against her jaw and what it had felt like for her life to be _sucked_ away)

and she ducks her head to avoid their eyes.

Billy nods fervently. She watches it from her peripheral vision. “I’m pretty sure. How else would you explain…?” He trails off, but she understands enough to know that he’s gesturing at her, even if it’s only with a look.

He still thinks she’s some sort of side effect.

“So,” Zack says, “what do we have to beat to get out of here?”

“Zordon pulled us out of here last time,” Jason cuts in. “He can do it again. It’s just...it’s just a matter of time.”

“Yeah? And how long you willing to wait in this...fucked-up nightmare world before Big Daddy comes and saves your ass, huh?”

The volatile way that Zack raises himself to his feet terrifies Kimberly. She’s certain that they’re going to fight, even as she whips her head up to stop them. Trini juts her chin forward and reaches out to pull Zack away by the sleeve.

“Let’s not do that again, eh?” she asks and the boys deflate enough that they almost look less angry. “No more fighting.”

She’s about to agree, because Trini looks downright terrifying with that glint in her eyes and Kimberly feels so _useless_ because apparently these kids are superheros and they’re stuck in some vacuum town with her and the least she can do is back the only other girl on the team up, right?

But she doesn’t get the chance.

A voice rings out, chilling and empty and completely devoid of concrete existence. Just some flashing echo of fear that shivers down Kimberly’s spine.

_You’re not ready to kill me. You’re not worthy!_

Trini goes rigid beside her and it’s like she’s stopped breathing. Kimberly stops jerking her head around to find the source of the voice to see the other girl’s eyes clamped shut. She reaches out before she really intends to, hand cupping the back of Trini’s neck, brushing her fingers against the baby hairs at the base of her skull until she opens her eyes.

“Hey,” she hears herself whisper and Trini smiles, looking almost pained by the act of it.

“Um, guys.”

Zack is watching them and all of them are on edge. Kimberly is certain that not a one of them is breathing well.

Not really.

He swallows. He says, “Did you hear that, too?”

.

 _Get to the ship,_ Jason decides, because he’s still going on about Zordon and the others follow almost without question.

Kimberly does too, but only because she’s drawn magnetically to this other girl she doesn’t know. Only because the only other option is to be left alone on some chilly dock where one of these kids died.

So the story goes.

.

Someone decides that it’s better to not stop moving. Kimberly isn’t sure who, exactly, but it might as well be herself because her feet just keep going. They walk through empty streets and all the lights are off. It’s not the first sign that something is different here, something is sick and dying, but it’s one of the more discomforting ones.

Trini shuffles beside her tiredly and Kimberly is afraid to look at her, so afraid of this tiny girl she’s meant to be friends with; she’s meant to be teammates with; she’s stuck in this strange, alien not-place with. Mostly, she’s afraid because she knows that she won’t be able to look away again once she starts.

“Are we close?” Kimberly asks, because the boys are far enough away that she feels comfortable enough with the fragility the question implies. The absolute, unabashed curiosity.

Trini’s gaze is hot on the side of Kimberly’s face, but the look is not returned.

They keep walking.

“Back there,” Kimberly explains after a moment because she still hasn’t gotten an answer, “are we friends?”

She imagines a question like that would hurt. Her grandmother started to lose her memory in the last few years of her life and the first time Kimberly had been called by her mother’s name--all memories of Kimberly her _only_ granddaughter fully erased--it had stung like the prick of a needle.

Slight, swift, and deeper than you’d ever think to anticipate.

“Yeah,” Trini mumbles, so quietly that Kimberly almost doesn’t hear. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You _guess_ so?”

“If we’re friends, we’re not friends who talk like _this_.”

Silence reigns supreme as always. Trini, it seems, isn’t one to talk until prompted.

Part of her wants to ask about Amanda, if they’ve made up by now for Kimberly’s monumental screw-up or, if not, if Trini thinks it’s better that way. She’s starving, suddenly. Parched for Trini’s opinion and comfort.

It frightens her: the realization that the Kimberly she is back home--this two-months-from-this-moment version of her--has four people to love her. Four people to utterly and completely destroy. Even by accident.

“What kind of friends are we then?”

And Kimberly remembers something that must have happened to her. Remembers in flashes: Trini in the darkness, the soft flutter of sheets around her stomach and Trini saying, _You’re ridiculous,_ in this easy, gravelly voice, her breath warm and sweet and the bed squeaking below Kimberly’s hips as she shifts closer.

Her face is hot, head a fire-flare of realization. “Fuck,” she whispers, and Trini glances her way.

“What?”

Kimberly shrugs. Mutters, “Nothing,” because the last thing she wants to bring up to the possible _girlfriend_ she doesn’t remember getting is that she’s figured out the nature of their relationship.

This inherent inability to keep her hands to herself whenever Trini is close.

It’s clear now why Trini wasn’t sure how to answer the questions posed.

“Do we do this a lot?” is her next question.

“Do what?”

Kimberly nods at the boys leading them, their postures slumped as they talk in hushed voices together. “Do we...I don’t know, Scooby Doo our way around X-Files cases in town. But, like...with more imminent death?”

It sounds ridiculous. Word vomit.

Trini snorts.

“What?”

“I just…” She tries to catch her breath. “You’re so weird.”

It doesn’t sound like an insult. Kimberly wonders, were they home--were she to remember--if Trini would have kissed her then. She’s looking at her as they walk like she’d certainly like to. Kimberly drops her eyes down to Trini’s lips and then back up to her eyes.

Kimberly wants to stop walking, struck with the sudden yearning for things she can’t really place as Trini stares at her. She wants to stop and tug Trini closer and lean down and part her lips, wants to--

But the boys have stopped walking up ahead and Kimberly barely stops her own feet in time to not run into them.

Her last thought before Trini’s demanding, “What _now_ ?” is that she’s never wanted anything more than to _remember_ in that moment.

The want roiling in the pit of her stomach is new and terrifying and she can’t get close enough _or_ far enough away from Trini all at once.

.

The “Illusion Simulator”

(as Billy fondly calls it)

has a reset button, apparently. One that was never really pushed by whomever took them here.

“Zordon showed us a nightmare here,” Jason tells her and Trini is stiff, rigid, not breathing again. “About what would have happened if Rita won...Back when…”

He doesn’t finish, but Kimberly gets the basic idea.

What she doesn’t understand is why there are hundreds of Pompeii-esque people in various poses of general distress in the middle of the main street. She can’t look away from them, can’t stop herself from staring down at the few that have begun to fall apart, as if knocked into by some great force and left to rest on the pavement.

“We need to find the ship. We need to get a message to Zordon,” Jason says.

His voice raises something under Kimberly’s skin, almost as if she’s heard this exact tone before, the message behind it, if not the words themselves.

They keep moving.

.

But the ground is where they left it and there’s no cliff. No rocks fall away and nothing magically appears.

Not even when Zack begins jumping up and down with all his might, as if expecting _the ground_ to crack under his weight.

“We don’t have our communicators,” Billy says and wiggles his wrist in the air as proof. “If we’re really where I _know_ we are, then we can’t get out of here unless Zordon knows where we went.”

“Well, does he?” Kim cuts in and the others look at her as if she’s suddenly sprouted a second head that only speaks English backwards. She shivers under the weight of it. “Does he know where we went?”

It’s a simple yes or no question, but she doesn’t get an answer for the longest time. And, even once she does, the only answer she gets is, “I don’t know,” from Jason.

“I don’t even have my coin,” Zack says, tugging the pockets of his jeans out as if to prove this.

This sends the others on some brief, panicked pat-down of themselves to ensure that, no. They don’t have theirs either. Trini’s earlier assumption was correct.

Kimberly is breathing very heavily. She can feel it rattling in her chest. She wants to go home, wants to see her mother, wants to _remember_ or else just...not. She doesn’t want to exist in this purgatory, in-between any longer.

From the way Zack is running his hands over his hair in some sort of frantic frenzy, she’d have to guess that she’s not alone in this.

.

Things she hears from him as he begins to shake and grab at his clothes, breathing heavily:

“We don’t even--” and, “--mom, she’s alone and I--” and, “I...I…”

She’s busy trying to piece it together as she watches Trini try to pull him into her arms; as she watches Jason step closer to him, try to talk him down, try to get him to make eye contact; as she watches Billy flap his hands frantically and pace back and forth, as if trying to _think_ Zack’s way out of his panic attack.

She’s busy, busy. Trying to understand what’s happening, trying to _catch a fucking break_.

And suddenly, she’s standing under the darkened football stadium lights, right back where she met Trini in the first place.

.

They’re in the bleachers this time, though, standing staggered across the steps and Zack is shaking, his hands trembling, as he pulls out of Trini’s grasp.

“We need to talk,” Billy tells them. “Zack, talk. Like that night at the fire, remember? Talk like that. Don’t keep it to yourself. That worked for us. It worked.”

Kimberly has no idea what this means, what it implies.

But Zack seems to and his eyes are wild.

“That didn’t work, Billy!” he all but snaps at the other boy. “We...Telling our secrets didn’t make us a better team. None of us...We weren’t the Power Rangers until...until you _died_.”

A beat of silence.

“ _After_ you died.”

He shakes his head and laughs humorlessly, stares down at his feet and then rubs at the back of his neck. “Do you know what it was like for me? Standing right here that night? Knowing that...that we were going to die. That...that worrying about my mom...that worrying about me...that none of it even mattered. Because the Rita Repulsa was about to tear us apart...I…”

Trini is standing next to him still and he leans into the hand she has pressed into his upper arm.

Kimberly watches it and then looks away.

“I...I wanted so badly to help people. I want to help _my mom_ more than anything and I just...I’m a Power Ranger and I can’t even help my mom. I couldn’t even help _you,_ Billy. Rita...she killed you and I couldn’t help. I just watched...I stood here on this stupid metal bench and I joined our little merry band of suicidal morons and none of it meant anything until I realized you were gone. That all of us were gone. We weren’t going to make it.”

He hangs his head and if Kimberly is dreaming--if none of this is real in the more traditional sense of the word--then it’s a far cry from her usual dreams. From missing tests and long car rides with her parents fighting in the front seats. From Amanda’s betrayed look and the scratchy seat she’d sat in in Mr. Detmer’s office when he’d handed Amanda’s dad that _picture_ , printed out on some sort of splotchy printer paper just to prove a damn point.

She knows Zack. Remembers the back of his neck in the front of class three years ago and the slump of his shoulders. The way he always shrunk in on himself during tests, as if certain he didn’t know any of the answers before he even got out his pencil to write them down.

But she knows more than that, too, and she realizes it in an instant. She’s seen him cry across some hazy fire two weeks after meeting him. She’s felt the crush of his fist against her sternum in some sort of dark cave as he smiled and said, _You good, Kimmy?_ as he helped her to her feet.

So, when he says, “I...I can’t do this,” it tears something inside of her.

The same thing, she thinks, happens to the others, if the way Jason lurches forward is any indication.

“Can’t do what?” Trini asks.

Zack shrugs. “I don’t know. Anything...All of it.”

The look on his face is enough to make Kimberly want to pull her eyes out of her head, if only to save herself the ache of it all.

“Yes, you can, Zack.”

It’s Billy who steps forward, who grabs Zack’s wrists and makes him look up and says, “You..You were chosen for the same reason as us. You’re worthy of this. We...We can’t save everybody. But that doesn’t mean we’re allowed to not try.”

There’s more than that--things Kimberly doesn’t let herself hear for the way they make her want to press her hand into her chest until her heart pops out the other side. It doesn’t matter anyway because there’s Zack again, behind the darkness of her eyelids.

Zack smiling. Zack ruffling a hand through her hair. Zack laughing with Trini in the last notes of sunset on the side of some familiar cliff.

“You can’t give up, Zack,” Billy says and his voice sounds tinny and far away, wavering a little like some warped vinyl through old speakers. “You can’t--”

.

What happens is this:

A blinding flash of light and the ground trembles under Kimberly’s feet so hard that she nearly collapses.

Would, maybe, if it weren’t for Trini’s arm around her waist, drawing her close. Drawing her in.

Kimberly’s heart lurches into her throat, either from the contact, or from whatever is glowing some dark, luminous shadow in Zack’s hand.

“Guys,” he says, when the light has faded, and his eyes are lit up, his grin bright and hopeful. “My coin! My--”

There’s something black and round in his hands. Kimberly doesn’t get a good look, and not for lack of trying.

Because all four of them are surging forward to see, to hear, to ask a thousand questions Zack wouldn’t have the answers to anyway and then, suddenly, just like that--

.

Zack is gone.

.

He disappears in some weird  vanishing act that any sitcom would have added a popping noise to.

There’s panic in those next few minutes.

Jason yelling, “Where did he go? Zack! Zack!”

Billy saying, “He got his coin back, though. If Zordon could pull him back, we’re next for sure.”

And Trini standing perfectly still with her arm still around Kimberly.

For her part, Kimberly doesn’t want to pull away. Thinks, maybe, she owes the contact to Trini

(her _maybe_ girlfriend)

since it’s such a shame she doesn’t remember her.

And it’s nice, anyway. Warm. She doesn’t want it to end.

Still, Kimberly is the only one detached enough from the situation, the only one thinking clearly, even with Trini breathing down the side of her neck. She says, “You told us the others had to defeat what they got sent here to fight in order to leave, right?”

Billy nods, looking dazed still. Looking unsure.

“Maybe Zack did.”

.

The details are boring, the list long-winded, but the important parts boil down to this:

Kimberly is right.

.

“So how do _we_ get home?”

“I’m...Zack just...I don’t _know_.”

“Well, what _sent_ us here. If it wasn’t Zordon it had to be--”

“The hand! The one Apex gave us. From the monster that turned Aubrey and Jacob! When you and Zack were--”

“I swear to God, Jason--if you and Zack’s fucking _fistfight_ got us sent here, I’m gonna--”

“No! I just meant...when they bumped into Kimberly...she was holding it...it dropped...Do you think--That stuff in there--Could it have spilled and--?”

“And what? Shorted out some sort of alien electrical wiring? Big _if_ , Bill. Mighty big.”

“I’m just saying--”

.

Kimberly’s head is a swimming, cluttered mess of things. Some swirling ocean of debris that she can’t even begin to sort through. What she knows is that Zack got back somewhere.

Well, she knows that Zack got _somewhere_. It might be anywhere. Anywhere at all.

And they’re all still stuck here.

Billy is the most clear-minded of them. He’s the one with the ideas. She’s gathered that already in the time she’s spent with them, but part of her wonders if she’s simply remembering. If these things are not realizations or observations at all, just things she’s rediscovering.

They flash back to the bonfire in a dizzying spin that leaves her whirling until Trini catches her and deposits her in a chair with careful fingers on Kimberly’s hips, a touch that digs its way carefully to her skin through her jeans and lingers for minutes afterwards.

“What are we doing back here?” she asks because she’s grasping at straws here. What is she _supposed_ to think?

“I think we can only go to places that...that made us feel bad while we’re here. Important places. Where we wanted to give up or--” Billy says. “We just gotta jump start it, I think, but I...I love you guys. Just remember that. I’m sorry. I don’t mean this.”

.

Of course, his idea isn’t _perfect._ Picking a fight to mimic the way he _thinks_ they got sent here is bad enough, but the way he handles it is almost even worse, because--

“You’re not a good leader, Jason.”

“Billy, what the h--”

“I mean it...You let me die. You let Zack almost _kill_ a guy the other day. You’re just this little kid playing pretend!”

It doesn’t sound sincere, even if the words bite. Billy says them so stiffly that they very nearly lose any intrinsic emotion they might have initially contained. They don’t, however, lose their meaning and she can tell from the hurt look in Jason’s eyes that this is working.

Whatever the plan is.

Jason Scott has been through alot in the past few months, even if Kimberly only remembers half that time. She remembers the boy who led the football team to an all-win season last year and was maybe heading towards that again this year before what happened. He’d stood so tall in the hallways that she’d hardly ever wanted to look up at him, and now here he is, slumped over against the meaningless words of someone he cares for so deeply that it shows in every move he makes.

Billy Cranston is fired up. Tired. He wants to go home and he thinks he knows the way.

“And Trini you…”

Something switches then. Maybe it’s the scenery. Maybe it’s the moment.

Maybe it’s the frightened way Trini is waiting for whatever he’s going to say next, whatever blow he’s about to deliver.

It never comes.

It’s hard to follow the rest of the plan when you’re crying, maybe.

Kimberly wouldn’t know, but Billy does.

.

Jason is on his knees beside Billy in the dirt in a moment and Trini is too. Kimberly follows out of obligation, but keeps her distance and towers over the three of them instead with her arms wrapped so tightly around her middle that she has no one to blame for the way she can’t breathe but herself.

The shadows tangle in the light of the fire and the sky is dark, void above them. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, and Kimberly knows that, were she to look, she’d find no moon either.

“I’m sorry,” Billy whimpers. “I...I didn’t mean it...I…”

It’s a lot of that for a while: of Billy just sort of trying to get the words out in anyway that makes sense and Kimberly suddenly remembers Trini across the fire.

_Are we Power Rangers? Or are we friends?_

And the look on Billy’s face because--

“I...She was going to kill Zack and I didn’t know...I had to tell her. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Trini’s hand rests gently on Billy’s shoulder and Jason has his fist pressed into the ground to keep his balance, but he’s not touching the other boy. He’s watching him.

“Billy,” he says, “none us...We don’t blame you for telling her. There’s...we’re okay. We won...I don’t understand.”

This is the part of the story that had hurt the most--Billy on that dock, telling Rita where to find the exact thing she was looking for. Kimberly tastes blood on the back of her tongue and waits.

Waits for something she is going to arrive any moment now.

“I should have protected you,” says Jason.

“You’re just trying to get us home. It’s okay. You’re okay,” says Trini.

This is what this place does to you. Kimberly knows that this night is a different night than she last recalls. She understands from the echos and the shadows that this not some random default. This place was chosen by whatever sent them here.

The scenes are already blocked and everyone knows their lines.

It’s not a matter of _how_.

It’s a matter of _why._

Billy looks up at her. Their eyes meet and Kimberly wants to take his hand, but understands enough to know that she shouldn’t. That’s not her place. It’s not what Billy needs.

“You’re a good person, Billy,” she says. “I know that you think you aren’t right now. I know what it’s like to blame yourself and hate yourself and maybe even for a good reason, but...Whatever happened, it’s not your fault. Okay? You can’t control anyone but yourself. And sometimes doing the right thing never feels right.”

It’s like someone else is talking for her. She doesn’t recall deciding to say these things on her own.

“I’m the one who--I told her where the crystal was and now...When others come, they’ll know too. They’ll know and one day we--”

“You can’t predict the future, Billy! You can’t...You can’t protect everybody all at once. It’s not...Not even when you’re a superhero.”

“I should have stayed quiet! I should have--”

“What?” Jason grinds out from between his teeth. “Died? Because you did that anyway. We almost lost you.”

It’s quiet. Deathly so. The fire pops.

“Please,” Trini whispers. “You can’t blame yourself forever, Billy. What happened to you...was terrible. Really. But...at some point, you have to start letting go of the blame. You have to give yourself permission to let go.”

Kimberly breathes. She runs her tongue over her lower lip and Billy looks at all of them. All three of them from where he’s sitting in the dirt with his arms around his knees.

He takes two deep breaths in a row and then Jason presses his forehead to Billy’s temple and Trini grabs his hand and--

“Thank you,” he whispers, so quietly that she can hardly even hear him. “You guys are…”

.

It’s the same as when Zack goes.

But somehow, it feels more sudden. Like maybe it should have taken longer or been less sudden.

A flash of light, Billy’s blue coin glowing brightly, hotly in his hand.

The only difference is his wide, panicked eyes and the way he says, “No, no, no, no,” reaching out to grapple at them, to try and grab them, seconds before he disappears.

.

“What do we do now?”

It’s Trini who asks it, but it’s directed at no one. Everyone, maybe.

She’s still on the ground.

So is Jason. He sighs.

_Not tonight. Skip me._

A voice on the air like the one in that bedroom, but this one is different. More frightened and small than anything Kimberly has ever heard before.

Kimberly feels her knees start to shake.

Jason bites his lip so hard it looks like it hurts. “I don’t know,” he tells them.

.

It’s cold. Kimberly is shivering in her jacket and Trini looks like she’s on the verge of offering her yellow hoodie right off her back, but Kimberly is certain that it makes no sense for her to.

And Billy said they could manipulate this place. To a limit. Billy said that they could go other places.

That they can leave.

So, they do.

.

Jason’s house is empty.  It’s as sickening as the other times they’d been moved and then they’re standing in his bedroom. It’s too cramped, too hot for three people, and it’s messy. A couple of smashed football trophies are lying on the ground by his desk.

“Why are we here?” Jason asks, and it’s strange to hear it come from _him_ in his own bedroom.

“Billy said we could only go places that matter to tonight. To the night we’re in.”

It’s Kimberly’s explanation, but there’s noise. More echoes.

But different this time.

_I think I’m the reason we can’t morph._

Kimberly recognizes her own voice not from the sound of it, but from the way it can’t be Trini’s.

Trini who is looking at her. There’s a stone in Kimberly’s stomach--heavy and immovable. It makes her feel sick and guilty for reasons she’s glad now to not remember.

The question being asked without words: why is Jason’s bedroom so important?

_Kim, there’s literally thousands of pictures going around school._

The problem boils down to this: Jason didn’t say that.

At least, not this Jason. Not any version of him that’s standing in front of her and when Kimberly freezes, when she looks at him, he’s staring at her with worry in his eyes--some resigned look that leave her sore.

They all heard it. Trini is stiff and not looking at either of them and that’s how Kimberly knows that something is very wrong.

 _I don’t care about those, I care about_ **_this_ ** _!_

The room is dark, but there are two indentations on Jason’s blanket-strewn mattress, as if two people are sitting there, close together. Saying these words.

If Kimberly weren’t certain of it being Jason’s voice, of it being _her_ own voice, she would be certain that she was hallucinating or imagining things.

But that scene in the other bedroom--the walls falling apart.

She certainly hadn’t imagined that.

 _I-I wanted to die,_ the echo says and Kimberly feels it throb through her very bones, _that’s why when you asked me to run away, I was ready._

She remembers Jason on the hill what feels like not a day before. Jason daring her to go, to leave, and how she’d even imagined packing her bags and leaving all of it behind. She’s been doing nothing but separating herself from whatever future version the others know, but it’s clear, now, that there was never any difference between them anyway.

Not really.

The voices stop, the indentations nothing more than deep shadows on the bed.

She expects Jason to ask if she’s okay, to offer some insight into whatever happened here between them that night, because Trini hadn’t mentioned her and Jason being close. Hadn’t brought it up at all, but she can’t say she’s surprised.

He feels how she does. She feels how he does, even now, when she barely knows him.

“We should rest,” Jason says instead and he looks smaller than Kimberly has ever seen him before. She’s remembering Billy spinning away, disappearing in a flash so quick that she hardly would have noticed if not for the way Jason had yelled after him, reached for him, tried to hold him and make him stay.

Jason is the leader. Trini said so earlier sitting across the campfire, and Kimberly doesn’t doubt it for a second.

Trini looks, briefly, like she wants to fight this, but Kimberly nods. She says, “Okay,” and then pulls Trini out of the room and down the long, unfamiliar hall to an empty, messy living room.

Books are scattered all over, blankets half-folded on the couch, and the front door is wide open.

Trini crosses the room to shut it and then looks at her, stares at her, says, “What happened here that night? Do I wanna know?”

Words unspoken: _you need to remember_.

What Kimberly wants to say is that she’s fairly certain she knows--that she must have opened up to Jason about what happened with Amanda, that she must have finally owned up to it to _someone_ and it was him first and--

But that would hurt Trini, probably. But she’s not certain that it’s her place to say.

Because, if she’s dating Trini back home, then the other her should have told her. She should have been honest. How does it all fall on her?

It shouldn’t and she’s burning, hot, sick. She wants to sleep for _hours_. And the only thing worse than being stuck in limbo with two people you don’t know is knowing that, back home, you’re probably in love with one of them.

 _Here, too_ , something inside her

(some part that wants to drag Trini in as some sort of comfort, either to herself or both of them)

whispers.

“Did she tell you?” Kimberly asks and Trini frowns beautifully, falls in on herself and sits on the couch.

“Tell me what?” she asks.

Kimberly sighs and takes the seat beside her.

.

“I’m sorry,” Kimberly whispers much later, when Trini is lying on the floor beside the couch and Kimberly is lying on the couch itself. It’s dark in the room and she can’t sleep, thinks Trini can’t either from the way her breathing hasn’t changed a single bit. “I wish I…”

“What?” Trini sounds puzzled, her voice dark. Kimberly fights the urge to turn her head to look at her. “Don’t...Thank you for telling me.”

“ _She_ should have told you already,” she mumbles. “It’s...I don’t know.”

She hears Trini roll over and when she _does_ look, she’s sitting up and watching her. “What are you talking about?”

Kimberly shakes her head helplessly. “I’m...I’m sorry I’m not who you want me to be,” she says. “I’m sorry we’re here. I don’t...I’m just sorry.”

And it’s possible that she’s saying it more for the act of simply apologizing than she is for actually wanting to be someone she doesn’t recall being. It’s possible that in the few hours or days or months that she’s known Trini, she’s already come to terms with never wanting anyone else.

Trini studies her for a long moment. “You shouldn’t be,” she says. “Don’t apologize for things you can’t control. That’s...stupid.”

She sighs and looks away and Kimberly traces the line of her nose with her eyes, the way her hair is tiredly curled around her shoulders.

“She should have told me, yeah,” Trini sighs, sounding pained and Kimberly longs to bridge the gap. “She should have told me and...I already _knew_ but I can understand. I can...I get it.”

She shrugs.

Sniffles.

“It’s whatever.”

Her hand is resting on Kimberly’s arm and Kimberly is sitting up now too. She presses the heat of her palm over Trini’s knuckles and she can’t control a lot of things--can’t be the person she was with Trini, maybe, the person Trini remembers--but she can control at least a few things.

Because the other her doesn’t deserve this girl who so easily forgives, loves, gives her space because she doesn’t remember her, doesn’t remember _them_ or what it means. The other her doesn’t understand. She’s taking it for granted.

Because if _this_ her had Trini she would--

She’d be so in love she could die.

“What?” Trini asks, confused when she catches Kimberly staring.

Kimberly shakes her head because she doesn’t _know_ and then she’s surging forward to kiss Trini, to cup the back of her head in her palm and press her closer. Trini sighs into Kimberly’s mouth in a sound that half-sounds like a sob and Kimberly shudders and lets go to apologize.

To say that she must have misread, or miscalculated, or that she knows they should wait.

“Sorry, I,” she whispers again, pulling away.

Except it’s Trini’s turn to move forward, to grip Kimberly’s neck and kiss her, to whisper, “Kim,” like a prayer against her lips and then mouth down the curve of her jaw.

It’s like Kimberly’s hands will never be able to touch enough skin at once.

She’s done this part before. Never with a girl, though.

But the next part is something she’s only gotten around to through clothes--and just once. Months ago, with Ty Fleming when his dad was working late one night and it hadn’t felt like this.

She tugs Trini up to the couch until they’re on top of one another, neither of them breathing, neither of them sure what to do until--

Suddenly they are.

Her hand slides up Trini’s side to grip at her rib cage with gentle fingers and Trini gasps into Kimberly’s mouth when those same fingers find the soft skin of her hip a moment later. Trini sinks her teeth into Kimberly’s bottom lip and Kimberly wants to _cry_ but she’s not sure why, even as she feels herself writhe down against Trini’s thigh because she doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t ever want to stop--

“Stop,” Trini whispers breathlessly. “Kim, stop for a sec--”

So Kimberly does.

She stops and she hovers over Trini on that lumpy couch as Trini reaches up to cup her cheeks and press a kiss to her nose and then scrunches her face up like she hadn’t meant to do that exactly.

It’s an aching pain to not press into Trini’s thigh again with the way her legs are, but she does have enough restraint to stop herself just in time.

“I...I...You should know,” Trini starts, sounding so hopeless that Kimberly has to kiss her again. Can’t stop herself and it’s hot and wet and _everything_ until Trini wrenches herself away again and says, “I…”

It goes on longer than she intends until she says, “We can’t do this!”

Then, “I...Jason likes you, okay? He...He’s gonna ask you out or he...he _did_ already or whatever and I can’t do this to him.”

But--

That doesn’t sound right.

Kimberly frowns. “What?” she asks.

Trini sucks in a shuddering breath and pushes at Kimberly’s shoulders until she has no choice but to slide off of her. “I...We can’t do this, Kim. Not...I can’t.”

And for a moment, Kimberly is repentant, is guilty and _god_ , Jason is right down the hall from them and if that’s true then--

But then she remembers Trini talking about her, walking down the street. Trini’s careful eyes and the way that she’d kissed back so immediately. “I don’t...” she starts, but that sounds weak, soft. She starts again. “Jason?”

Trini sags and pushes herself to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You’re going to remember when we get back and this…” She gestures between them. “It’s gonna be ruined. Forever. And you’re my...you’re my best friend, okay? I don’t wanna do that.”

“I thought _we_ were together back home,” Kimberly tells her.

Trini’s jaw slackens and she breathes, confused, for a moment. “What?”

“From...The way you look at me and the way I...I want to _touch_ you all the time. I thought I was remembering bits and pieces of it.”

“You wanna touch me all the time?”

Kimberly looks away, feeling small and stretched out and she can feel the raw, naked yearning in Trini’s gaze from where she’s sitting. “Never mind,” she says.

Trini is watching her and this whole conversation would probably feel a lot more weighted if they were sitting further apart. As it is, Kimberly’s thighs are still partially bracketing Trini’s hips and there’s no way for her to escape unless Kimberly moves.

So she does.

“Did you ever think,” she says later, when Trini is pretending to be asleep on the floor. “That the other me...she feels this way, too?”

Trini doesn’t answer, but her breath hitches for a moment and then restarts.

Kimberly lies on the couch and thinks about Trini’s lips on her skin and she doesn’t sleep a wink.

.

Jason finds her hours later, washing her face in the bathroom sink and carefully avoiding looking at her reflection. His eyes are tired, purple shadows underneath them that she’s never seen before. He stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and she turns to look at him after a moment.

“What we heard last night,” he says, “I know _why_.”

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she presses herself into the sink and braces her hands there, grips the porcelain tight.

“You don’t remember, but...the night we’re stuck in, you came to me and told me about everything that happened with Amanda Clark and Ty Fleming. You felt guilty that we couldn’t morph into our armor before that. Like it was your fault alone. I think it was all of our faults.”

Her stomach sinks at the reminder of her own actions, of her own guilt. She swallows thickly.

“Trini texted us that night, all of us. Told us to meet her at the football field.”

Cogs mesh together in Kimberly’s head, pieces slotting into place to form a whole picture, and she makes a small noise of realization that Jason doesn’t even blink at.

“I’ve never felt...like less of a leader than when I got that message. When Billy--I didn’t know what to do and you took charge, but with Trini...She needed us. She needed _me_. And instead of helping her, I was asleep, none the wiser to what was happening to her across town. If you hadn’t woken me up, I might have slept my way into the apocalypse. I’m not who I want me to be.”

There is absolute desolation on his face. Kimberly doesn’t know him well.

Not _this_ her, but she’s struck silly by, _You’re dating Jason back home_.

If that’s true, she’s meant to comfort him, no doubt. But no impulse to do so overcomes her. Not anything more than standing there and listening.

She hears it--a throb of sound in her head--and then she’s saying the words before she even really plans to. “Then be the person you want to be,” she says and Jason smiles at her, wistfully, and reaches out to grab her hand.

She lets him. Lets the moment continue for a few more seconds. Because he’s earned that, at least.

“I have to tell you something,” she starts next, in the interest of full disclosure but he cuts her off with a shake of his head.

“Don’t bother,” he says quietly, only a whisper. “I...the walls aren’t thick here and I couldn’t sleep.”

The bathroom’s lights aren’t on and it’s still dark outside. Kimberly realizes that she isn’t even sure if there’s electricity at all. She hasn’t bothered to check and doing so right then would be silly and interruptive.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Jason shrugs. “I’m...I can’t say I’m really surprised. You’ve always looked at her differently. Other you, too.”

And those aren’t the words of a boyfriend. Those are the words of a friend. A good friend.

“I love both of you. I know you don’t remember, but...I do. We’re all...We’re a family.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I just want what’s best for all of you. Back home, I think I give you guys too hard a time, but...I just…”

He doesn’t have to finish.

Kimberly squeezes his hand.

He smiles at her, easy. And Kimberly _swears_ she remembers what loving him feels like.

It’s new. Different. A love she feels swell similarly for Zack and Billy--long gone and safe now.

Different, still, from how she’d felt under Trini’s lips hours before.

She’s about to tell him all of this, but she doesn’t get the chance.

A light again, like before, but no struggle. Just a red coin in Jason’s hand and a sad smile as he disappears.

“Wait,” she says, when he’s about to go. “What happened to Trini this night? What did you mean?”

Jason shakes his head and she can feel the pull of him begin, that lack beginning to settle into the room with her. “Ask her,” he says.

And then he’s gone.

.

Trini finds her standing there in the bathroom and she doesn’t ask where Jason went.

 _The walls aren’t thick here,_ Kimberly remembers.

“And then there were two,” Trini says ominously and then they’re back in Jason’s bedroom. The room is swirling a little, tilted, as if the world itself is about to fall apart.

.

The scene changes some seconds later, before either of them can even get their bearings. Almost as if they’re not allowed to exist in anyone’s low moments but their own.

It’s the same bedroom as before. The walls, intact this time, and Kimberly stands by the window with Trini, who has gone rigid beside her.

“Where are we?” are the first words that come.

But Kimberly doesn’t ask them expecting an answer. She asks them because she already knows.

 _Do you know who I am?_ that same sickening voice from the first time asks, the sound of it hovering somewhere near the bed.

“Trini?” Kimberly asks, reaching out to grab her, but Trini pulls her arm away before she can. “Is this...what happened here?”

There’s a loud cracking noise and then plaster rains down on the bed from the ceiling. Trini jumps and curls in on herself, falls to the floor with her hands around her knees and buries her face in the denim of her jeans.

Another crack, this time from the bed as the frame buckles, and then the exposed brick wall across the room.

Kimberly follows the movement, half expecting to see the fight unfolding in front of her eyes, but there’s nothing to see. “Trini?” she asks again, frightened.

Another crash--the wardrobe. Then another--the other wall.

There’s some sort of wild energy in the room, sparking and untamed and Kimberly drops down beside Trini, tugs her into her arms and says, “Trini, Trini...I’m here,” even though she’s frightened and someone is whimpering and later she’ll realize it’s her.

 _We can have a little deal, Didi, my friend_ , the voice says with venom Kimberly can’t fathom and then it falls silent.

“Trini, it’s over,” Kimberly says and she’s not sure that it’s true, but she believes it. Wishes for it.

And, anyway, Trini looks at her, eyes red and cheeks wet and she says, “Promise?” in a voice that breaks Kimberly’s heart a hundred times over.

“Cross my heart,” Kimberly says and pulls Trini’s face into her the safety of her neck.

.

“Was it Rita? Did she attack you?”

Kimberly asks this callously much later and they’re sitting on Trini’s collapsed bed with their fingers entwined. Trini rubs the forefinger of her free hand down Kimberly’s wrist and nods.

“Yeah,” she says. “She came into my room. She...She attacked me.”

Kimberly nods.

“She attacked me and you were across town making googly eyes at Jason.”

Kimberly would very much like the slight, quiet sob that escapes her lips to be blamed on whatever guilt future Kim should be feeling right now.

Except, there is no future Kim anymore. There‘s just her.

In Trini’s eyes, she can see that same hollow, drowning pain she’d witnessed on the couch last night, in those early moments in the football field when they’d first found each other. “I...I should have been here,” Kimberly tells her.

Trini is staring at her, head shaking slowly and Kimberly is afraid when she opens her mouth to respond. “I...I’m sorry. None of this is your fault.”

Logically, this is understood, but it’s always been so easy for Kimberly to fall back into that basic, instinctual self-loathing that embraces her so readily. “I--the other me, I guess... She...She’s... She’s an idiot. She should have been there for you, she should have _done_ something--”

Kimberly _hates_ her. Hates this future self she’s trying to return to and everything she’d been so stupid to try to hide from.

And Trini’s eyes flash with anger for the first time since Kimberly’s been with her. “Don’t,” she says, her voice hard and dangerous. “She didn’t know. She doesn’t owe me anything.”

“Trini,” Kimberly says. “I know that you...I know that you’re friends with her, but she...I don’t know...She’s not a good person.”

“She’s...not perfect, but she _is_ a good person,” Trini snaps. “She’s _you_ . What do you not understand about that? She’s you. She’s the you I love because I love every part of her, every part of _you_. So just--”

Kimberly kisses her again, fierce and tameless. Kisses her again and again and Trini pushes closer to kiss her back until neither of them can breathe, until the only option is to pull away.

“Kim,” Trini sighs, forehead pressed to Kimberly’s, as she tightens her grip so carefully that Kimberly believes for a moment that she remembers every single touch they’ve ever shared, every moment when she’d wished that Trini would never let go again. “I think I’m the reason you don’t remember.”

Silence. Kimberly doesn’t pull away.

Trini continues.

“You sent us here, Kim. When the boys were fighting, you...you didn’t know what to do and I think all this fear we’ve been fueling ourselves on finally reached a head for all of us. I think...that ship listens to us, did you know that?” Trini smiles a little, as if fond of the thought. “The doors open for you like you’re going into a damn supermarket. I…”

She clears her throat and pulls back enough that they’re just sort of sitting too close, hands still clasped between them.

“I think you made this place. Or _we_ made this place. All of us. I think it built itself around the first time any of us ever realized how scary this whole thing was, that we’d been chosen for something bigger than us and maybe we don’t feel we deserve it. And...I think it listens to our fears. I think you wanted to forget all of it as much as you’re scared you’re going to. And I think I’m terrified of there being a version of you that I never got to know...and…”

She trails off. Shrugs.

“I’m not making sense.”

Except--

“You _are_ ,” Kimberly tells her and she wants to kiss her again, but she doesn’t.

The words rattle inside of Kimberly’s chest.

Trini doesn’t speak again. Not until Kimberly says, “What?” to the vacant look on her face.

And then she sighs, her breath brushing through Kimberly’s hair as it moves past her. “I just...I’m never going to feel any different about you. You could never get your memories back. You could forget me every day and I’d still feel this way. I’ve been terrified you wouldn’t understand.”

Kimberly pushes some of Trini’s hair out of her face and tugs a little on her beanie affectionately until Trini smiles. “I _do_ ,” she says because she does.

More than anything, she feels it in every single cell of her body.

Trini feels _solid_ suddenly, in her arms. There’s no other word for it.

Kimberly trembles and tries to pull her close, knows what’s happening.

Because when Trini finally, finally pulls away, her yellow coin is in her hand.

Trini’s eyes are wide, sad, she says, “Kim,” and begins to look for something she won’t find because whatever got the others out, Kimberly hasn’t reached yet.

She’s stuck here. Trini is leaving just like Zack left. Just like Billy left. Just like Jason left and Kimberly is going to be left alone.

Like she deserves.

“Kimberly, no, I--” She tries to reach out and grab her, fingers trailing helplessly against Kimberly’s arm and thighs and knees, but it’s no use.

She disappears just like the others did.

Gone in a moment and barely a whisper of sound.

And Kimberly remembers.

..

“Trini!”

“Shit, Crazy Girl, you’re--”

She’s in some stiff bed, squinting under too-bright lights.

The boys are around her, Alpha-5 beeping in the corner, and she’s in the ship. She sees that now, clearly. Some side room she never braved to discover on her own and everyone starts trying to talk over one another to ask if she’s okay--is she okay?

It was scary in there.

They didn’t think they were ever going to get out.

But they did--

\-- _they did_ \--

\--and now.

Knuckling the sleep from her eyes, Trini manages a slightly coherent: “Kim?”

(it’s not what she means to say, but Kimberly’s resolved look is still burning in her eyes)

The boys still above her, and Alpha-5 chirrups out a noise of distress.

No one knows what to say.

Billy’s eyes glance over somewhere and Trini follows his line of vision. Sits up in bed to see Kimberly lying in the bed adjacent, her eyes closed in some restful sleep that would have her thinking she were dead if it weren’t for the rise and fall of her chest.

Kimberly, it seems, is still trapped there. Wherever _there_ is.

Trini’s hands won’t stop shaking and it’s all she can do to keep herself from throwing up.

.

What she learns is this:

They cannot pull Kimberly out on their own.

Neither, it seems can Zordon.

“What do you mean?” Trini yells at the wall and Jason’s hand is steadying around her waist. He doesn’t try to stop her.

“It’s beyond what I can do.”

But, she wants to argue, _you did it before._

Do it again.

He can’t. That’s all he can say.

.

“We were gone for seven hours,” Billy tells her in the medical bay with Kim’s wrist under her hand as she sits on the bed beside her. “You were, at least. I came back in hour five.”

It felt like weeks longer than that, though, and another hour has passed since she woke up.

Kimberly shows no sign of waking up.

.

The shattered glass from the hand has long since been scooped up and disposed of by Alpha-5. It seems he also saw fit to rid the room of the hand.

“Better that way,” Zack says. “I don’t wanna touch it and get sucked into _another_ nightmare world.”

Trini would laugh, but only if the sound would be enough to wake Kimberly up.

.

Hours pass.

Trini doesn’t move. She doesn’t sleep.

Kimberly doesn’t wake up.

.

“She’s gonna be fine,” Jason tells her, later, when he brings her a bottle of water from the duffel bag he has stored somewhere. “She’s...she’s gonna wake up any minute.”

Trini can still taste Kimberly on her lips and she’s absolutely aching. She brushes her fingers through Kimberly’s hair and tries to remind herself to breathe.

“Do you really believe that?” she asks and Jason smiles.

“I don’t necessarily want to believe anything else.”

.

What she doesn’t see is Kimberly back in that shadow version of Angel Grove, Kimberly sitting in Trini’s empty bedroom until the sounds of the attack she wasn’t around to witness fade entirely.

She doesn’t see Kimberly in Jason’s room listening to the echo of her and Jason’s conversation for so long that she has it memorized. She doesn’t see her in the football field or at the bonfire. She doesn’t see her looking out over the darkness of the town that doesn’t exist, so she doesn’t see her when she goes back to where they found Billy, only to find a great chasm where the ground she’d once crossed was.

Through the water, through the cave and into the same ship she’d had described to her, dim and haunted by the sound of four kids who lost someone--themselves, maybe, too.

And then to a room she’d swear she’s seen in every dream she’s ever had until she feels, **_This_ ** _is what matters,_ thrumming through her veins.

Trini doesn’t see any of that.

But the end result is the same.

.

“Wake up,” Trini says in the fifth hour of stiffly sitting curled around Kim, the boys asleep on the other beds.

She’s half-hysterical. Half-crying.

Kimberly stirs. Her eyes open.

“Hey, Trini,” Kim grumbles, voice gravelly. “Found you.”

And for the longest moment they just stare at each other and then--

“Oh my god, you’re really here,” Trini says and crashes their lips together.

.

This is what it comes down to.

Not knowing how, necessarily, but understanding _what_ . Knowing _why._

_._

Afterwards, the sun greets them on the top of the mountainside. Trini doesn’t have the words to express her gratitude for the cliff waiting for them above the water, for the girl with her arm around her waist.

Having said that--

“Just so you know, since I don’t know if you’re completely up to date on what was or was not going on with me and Jason before...I only want you. I’ve only ever wanted you.”

“I know the feeling,” says Trini and she kisses her right there, surrounded by smiling, bright, laughing boys and the sun hot and the wind airy around them.

The air is bright with the promise of something not yet planned and, if you asked any of them, they’d tell you with no uncertainty that they were not afraid.

Whatever happens, they’ll face it together.

And after everything--all of _that_ \--Kimberly finds herself so easily convinced by Trini’s words and her voice and her hand on her hip that she doesn’t think to question it.

She runs a hand down the side of Trini’s face and into her hair and she breathes. In and out.

They stand there for so long

(flanked by three boys who are laughing and smiling and light enough to be carried on the back of the wind itself)

that the two of them nearly forget what it even feels like to be afraid.

...

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> see? told you so. trimberly 5ever.
> 
> special thanks to my fiancée for reading this 20 times and listening to me plan it aloud in the middle of the night. also to ole, mere, hayley, and a couple others i'm forgetting cause i'm the worst for reassuring me that this was not a confusing mess. you guys all rock. 
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](http://housewithoutwindows.tumblr.com/) with prompts or criticism if you want. i love to suffer.


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